FOR INTERNET MARKETERS -- TO INVITE CONTROVERSY and ENCOURAGE DISCOURSE to all of those seeking to become more effective, HAPPY marketers. Here we discuss what is good marketing, bad marketing, INVISIBLE marketing, grey area marketing, back door marketing, you name it. We are ethical people. We just discuss everything. WARNING -- NOT FOR THE FAINT AT HEART! Did I happen to mention "internet marketing"?

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Thursday, April 26, 2007

(Fair warning: If you don't like the word "bullshit" then turn back now... ;-)

"More Internet Marketing Bullshit? Again?!"

I want to say "Again?! More Bullshit?" but I just can't bring myself to even act surprised. What's awfully sad about this latest round of "internet marketing bullshit" is that it's sincerely believed by those who proffer it. I mean REALLY, REALLY believed. It has become such second nature to them that they're starting to take on the appearance, and develop the charismatic appeal, of cult leaders.

And it's not a LOT of people I'm referring to but rather a small bunch of them. You know, the internet marketing "temple priests?"

IM Groupie or Download Junkie?

The most vulnerable are the NEWER amongst us. When they step into the bullshit stream of "marketing prophecies", it seems as if they have merely "happened upon" some secret stash of information of which only some merry band of exclusive marketers are aware. It then starts to take on a similar fanatical appeal to thing such as James Redman's, "The Celestine Prophecies" or Carlos Castaneda's, "A Separate Reality." In fact, I've spoken with many of these "internet marketing junkies" who get strung out on whatever grade of "internet marketing crack" the gurus are selling each week and it's just really sad.

Some of us have formed a half-amused tolerance for it and we sift through it looking for the golden kernels of corn. Others prefer to take the side roads, blazing their own trails into their own smaller, but just as viable, communities on places like StumbleUpon, and MyBlogLog. Still others just sit there each week scratching their head and wondering when the clouds are going to break and their long vacation in "Internet Marketing Purgatory" is going to end.

"The Sky Is Falling!"

It's rapidly becoming one of those instances where there's so much bullshit going around that no one really knows what to believe anymore. So what does a suggestible person do when they don't know what to do anymore? They very simply go with whomever is most persuasive. Of course, some try to resist... at first. But you know how it is - a constant steady drip, just like we set up autoresponder message series - drip, drip, drip - and eventually, one's resistance wears away.

The latest round of bullshit from Top Marketers is the equivalent of PORSCHE or FERRARI manufacturers telling you that the automobile industry has changed forever and that cars like LEXUS, INFINITI and TOYOTA are no longer worth their, or your, time. And that's just bullshit. Like Chicken Little, they scream that the "internet marketing sky" is falling and you'd better get inside their dealership before it lands on you. Oh, and your family. Don't forget, it's going to land on your family, too, right?

But I want to give you some hope, so pay very close attention to what I'm about to say next.

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.

Notice I'm not packaging this up into either a "viral book" or an e-product and screaming, "Get this now or you'll forever be someone's 'Internet Marketing Bitch.'" The uncomfortable truth might be that you already are... so read on and let's find out together.

Robert Kiyosaki and Financial Freedom

As far as I can see, Robert Kiyosaki has something that I've seen so very rarely in most top marketers - sincerity. Again, I'm not speaking of perfection, or of 100% accuracy, but he has always struck me as sincere. He also understood that having fun is one of the ways that people learn best. And it was only after playing his game, "Cashflow 101", about 6 times, that I got hit with an "Aha!" which, right then, inoculated me from the diseases of the "work-at-home" holy priests.

And sometimes, that's all it takes is one "Aha!" and one person to honestly and sincerely share it with you.

It just makes perfect sense that if you can get even just ONE really great golden nugget from each well-written information product you read, then you'd be constantly enriching your life. So when I set out to read Robert Kiyosaki's,"Rich Dad, Poor Dad", I began with the idea of becoming "rich" or a "millionaire" - ideas that we are plied with day in and day out, non-stop, ad nauseum.

But by the time I was done, I had taken away two "nuggets" which have have saved my life and health. And here they are...

Playing "Cashflow 101" helped me realize that, in many cases, a janitor is in a much better position to achieve financial freedom than a doctor or a lawyer.

So, hopefully, you've either stopped, or will stop, chasing the gurus around, feeling that you have to "get rich" or be a "millionaire" and will just start working on earning enough to start covering some of your monthly bills. Is that too much to suggest?

As I was checking out my sweet 3rd place in "the coolest guy on the planet" SEO competition standings (Google) over a year after it started, Brad Fallon made me aware of something. And like him, I think, if you're not doing it already, it's no big deal. It's just another Web 2.0 type thing that has some pretty cool potential.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Oy! OY! Gary Ambrose is putting on another Nickelmania. And this time it's with Keith Wellman.

Ya gotta love Nickel Manias. They have about the same appeal as a scratch ticket: you can't pass up the chance you might win something big for a mere $2, but more often than not, you walk away $2 lighter and with an adrenalin rush that only another Nickelmania can cure. You see what I'm saying?

I mean, where are the millionaires from the last 2 Nickelmanias?

And don't you already have enough things to focus on right now? You probably do - but THAT is why it's called Nicklemania because Gary Ambrose knows it's gonna take a bargain frenzy to break you away from the things you really SHOULD be focusing on.

I am going to recommend a BUY for this third, and supposedly final, Nickelmania.

The BAIT product is a DVD of a $997 seminar he put on with Keith Wellman about getting MORE profit out of your opt-in lists. As I write this, Nickel Mania costs me a whopping $2.60. But, in Nickel Mania fashion, each purchase raises the price, so if I were you, I'd get over there pretty fast.

I see no harm in getting this DVD for its potential educational value - to study, amongst other things:

Gary Ambrose seminar technique; and

Whatever nuggets of wisdom might be therein about list building and profiting.

It strikes me that at even at under $20 it's going to be a true steal. Also, it's going to be mailed to you, so you'll have to be comfortable giving them some kind of mailing address whether it's your house or a PO Box. These guys have been around enough that, personally, I'm OK with that.

THE UPSELL/DOWNSELL STRUCTURE

Immediately after purchasing Nickel Mania, you're going to get the standard UPSELL. The upsell is just a couple of licenses. One is for unlimited resale rights to the DVD for which they provide the sales page, etc. And another is distribution rights to another of their products. And you'd get all that for $147.

UNLESS YOU ARE SURE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO SELL THEM, I'm recommending you pass on that. Yours truly has even bought stuff for that "maybe someday" sale and, truly, the money would be better spent on COMPLETING some of the things you might already be working on, OR on an EZINE AD for something you already sell, OR on a nice gift for someone you love.

Just don't waste it on something that will probably collect dust on your hard drive no matter how good the deal may seem.

THE DOWNSELL...

Once you say "no thanks!" to the UPSELL, you'll be offered pretty much the same thing except your resell rights will be limited to 200 copies. And THAT, I MIGHT have given a big thumbs up to if the difference in price was significant. But it isn't ($127). So I'm not.

You're free to get either, really. They are both actually not bad deals but what I'm trying to get at here is to get you to make sure you HONESTLY qualify yourself. Don't just get it because it looks like a great deal and you don't want to miss out on it because "some day I'll be famous and then I can sell it on my supersite to my huge list!"

Instead, be realistic. And that's what I'm being when I write this article to tell you that the initial offer of the Seminar DVD is WELL worth the chance but when it comes to the ensuing upsell, you really need to think about it carefully.

Best wishes!Samps. Forgot to mention, Nickel Mania is also paying out 100% commissions on the main sale and 25% on the up and down sells! I'm only saying I think the main sale is worth it. The up and down sell you'll have to ultimately decide for yourself. Here's the Nickelmania link again....

Sunday, April 22, 2007

I'm tellin ya folks, it doesn't pay to play by the rules. I know many of you and you come on here really believing in the "work-at-home" dream, that maybe you really CAN'T make "$8,000 in just 3 days!" but that, with a little handshaking and the right amount of effort, MAYBE you can start making a mortgage or car payment, right?

Am I at least in the ballpark?

There's all kinds of ways to make money online but one of the things that most, if not all, people agree upon is that FREE SEARCH ENGINE TRAFFIC really just rocks. It's some of the sweetest stuff that no-money can buy because it's pretty freakin' targeted and the price is just right! AND, the people who are visiting have already been making an effort to find what you're selling.

Whether it comes from MSN, Google or Yahoo, we still affectionally call it GOOGLING because GOOGLE is the household name and most of it comes from GOOGLE anyways.

So just imagine some poor guy like, oh say, Joe Dough, has 170 websites and, in the middle of the night, Google decides to change some silly constant in it's elaborate algorithm from (let's just make this number up) .02 to .01 and, instantly, in the blink of an eye, 159 of Joe's websites plummet off the side of Mount Google and disappear into the dark abyss, never to be heard from again.

"Over the last two years, Google has introduced a series of algorithm and filter changes that have led to unpredictable search engine results, dropping the rankings of many clean (non-spamming) web sites.

Google's algorithm changes started in November 2003 with the Florida update, now remembered as a legendary event among the webmaster community. This was followed by the Austin, Brandy, Bourbon, and Jagger updates. Google updates used to occur monthly; they're now carried out quarterly. But with so many servers, there seem to be several different results rolling through the servers at any time during a quarter." ~ Rodney Ringler, Sitepoint Tribune, May 2006

What a mess! Now if you're Joe Dough, you've invested your prior earnings properly and you've still got 11 sites pulling in some money and 159 sites that need some serious TLC, ASAP! That is IF they are salvageable. But who knows, right? And who wants to spend all the time they came here to SAVE analyzing 159 websites in hopes of getting all, or even some, of them topranked again? Not me...! You?

In fact, he's lucky he had 170 sites. Imagine if he only had 10 or 20? Or 5? Or 1?

Ok, so that version of Google's "fiscal kick to the groin" took place way back in 2006, right? And, it doesn't really matter much now because a year in web-time is like a dozen years real-time, right? Sure, tell that to the hard-working people, just like you, who watched their sites, AND their bankrolls, take a trip to the deep south that year! That money is GONE, and gone forever. It could have gone towards building new sites, paying for a home or a car, or simply hanging out in the bank and multiplying.

And just in case you thought the shenanigans were over, just have yourself a nice look at this:

"Setting up incoming links to your web site has long been recognised as a fundamental way to increase your search engine rankings, but I'll go further than that: if your site doesn't have links coming into it, then (in Google's eyes) it doesn't exist.

But now Google is looking to test a few ways in which they can police people buying and selling text links, and a request by Google guy Matt Cutts for webmasters to turn snitch hasn't gone down very well in the web community..." ~ Brendon Sinclair, SitePoint Tribune, April 19, 2007

But more importantly, right from a Google guy, Matt Cutt's, lips to our ears:

"I’d like to get a few paid link reports anyway because I’m excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing algorithms. Google may provide a special form for paid link reports at some point, but in the mean time, here’s a couple of ways that anyone can use to report paid links..." ~ Matt Cutts

Whoopsie! That doesn't sound good! And a lot of guys, far more geekier than I will ever need to be, realized it, too, and spoke up!

"How many more trojan horses Matt? Nofollow was supposed to help us point out links we can’t vouch for, now Google wants us to use it on paid links. Now, the spam report - which we thought was supposed to be used for reporting spam activity - is to be used to report “suspected” paid links?What’s next? Asking us to share our Google Analytics data so you can weed out the pages that users don’t find interesting?

With all due respect, this is going too far!" ~ Andy Beal

But let's just collectively pull our heads out of the sand(box), folks. I've already said it - I know you came here believing in the "work-at-home" dream. It's no different than every single bride and groom believing in "'til death do us part" even while the divorce rates are at 50% and climbing. Believe me, I'm not trying to depress you. I'm trying to open your eyes and, gosh forbid, even HELP you, albeit a very limited number of you, with a virtually unstoppable solution.

"Back in 2003 you could launch a site, put some nice content on it and then get some traffic. In 2003 Google decided to punish the content builders and white hat seo`s by creating something that has commonly being known as the sandbox.

I joined an seo forum to find out why I was having problems getting traffic and it turned out that Google decided to screw the white hat seo that was making the internet clean and full of content by putting a penalty on new domains, content and links.

The option to build content rich sites was no longer there for most people unless you had a real fat wallet or you were prepared to eat bread and water while the sandbox released you." ~ Earl Grey from Syndk8

I hope you're starting to get it, folks! Google might sometimes APPEAR to be a nicey-nice company with some really cool people running it but you have to take 2 very, very important things into account:

They are a company. And, as such, are, by necessity, more interested in their bottom line than in you as an individual;

And, they never asked your permission to use your websites in a way that would make them money.

They key is take whatever advantages you can find from the outset, until you are making a decent living, and THEN you can put away all the stealth tools and do whatever the heck you want. But just beware - Google will ALWAYS be dancing and only the smartest will survive!

Monday, April 16, 2007

In about 2 weeks, I am releasing something that you will have likely never seen before. I say "likely" because we let a few slip out early on but otherwise NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE, has ever created anything as remotely powerful and easy to use. I've seen a LOT of things that look and sound "clever" and offer the naive and unsuspecting reader some kind of hyped up reality but, when you see this, I maintain that you will have no choice but to agree that we have one heck of a programmer on board. An ordinary programmer can't just make something like what we'll soon be releasing. He or she must ALSO be extremely passionate about finding the most intense, unorthodox methods of putting REAL power in the hands of REAL people like you.

I know you get used to hearing so much bull in the marketing hype scene but when you see what is coming your way, it will absolutely warp your mind and probably spoil you forever! I'll just say that if YOU are one of those who gets one of only 2000 copies, you will be one VERY lucky S.O.B.... No hype, no exaggeration and absolutely no overestimation of your ability to put this to use. It won't merely level the playing the field. It will actually vault you above it and beyond.

So get on this blog's feed to ensure you are one of the first to hear about it. Even if you are already on my mail list, being on this blog's feed will ensure your notification doesn't get sucked up by your ISPs spam filter during early notification and/or launch. You'll continue to receive an email from this feed only when this blog is updated with a new post and, as usual, you may unsubscribe at any time without hassle. Use this form below.

Enter Your Email to Ensure Notification:

Once you've ensured you'll be notified early on, check out the following. It's going to be the absolute, most hottest, "YouTube"-style site explicitly for internet marketers!It is absolutely and totally 100% free to join and you'll instantly begin to benefit from all kinds of audio, video and written content made available to you by experienced, accomplished marketers. This will allow you not only to SAMPLE a given marketer's expertise before ever purchasing from them but ALSO you, too, will be allowed to freely upload any content that you would like to make available to the internet marketing public either now, or in the future.

Get in NOW because it's still in BETA mode and I'm not sure if the free signup or membership terms will change once they abandon beta mode and enter into full launch mode. I'm drop dead serious, folks; I can't stand bs. This resource is VERY well done, VERY YouTube-like, and VERY beneficial to everyone in the work-at-home crowd.